About a week ago I saw Rick Reimer's (On30guy) post here on MRH, where he is creating a wall of a brick building with his laser. I thought this must be possible with my Sillhouette Cameo die-cutter and a diamond tip scribe in styrene for HO scale.

Determined to fool around and try to see how well a low cost machine can scribe this in 0.010" styrene for HO scale, I set out last weekend and started drawing in the Silhouette Studio Designer. This is what I came up with:

Work on my new layout will start next month. The two halves (wye tracks on the left and right drawings) are connected by a double track bridge that spans a doorway leading to the outside of the basement and can be easily removed in an emergency.

Family challenges for the past year or so included kitchen renovations and job losses to contend with. However, we have that behind us now.

I purchased two tables from a business that was shutting down. Now I have an L-shaped table and am laying out track.

Growing up I had a train table above the garage that I built my first layout on. It was built for me after we remodeled our house tand consisted of two 4x8 sheets of plywood in an 'L' shape. I spent many hours laying out track and building a some what prototype based layout. I never could get the switch machines to work right and was only moderately successful in placing a few caboose ground throws. My rolling stock consisted of the typical Bachman Tyco and Athearn with a variety of equally poorly running motive power.

Well in the process of moving, the railroad sort of got mangled. Which is okay because I planned on pulling it all up and rebuilding to the plans that I have shared in recent weeks. So track is up, subroadbed is in the trash. That will be replaced by something else that I haven't quite decided on yet. But the process will be slow and carefully done as this is the last model railroad I want to build. Famous last words, right?

Inspired by Gary Christensen's recent TMTV caboose weathering articles, I dug an old caboose out of my kit archive with a view to trying out some of Gary's techniques.

Released in 1958 at a retail price of $5.10, this looks like a pleasant challenge which should result in a well detailed model.
I'll post a few construction pix as things progress and then the weathering attempts, following Gary's guidelines.

 For those of you who have read my blog post "A tale of three bridges-New Jersey" That post brings you into my world when I was a young lad. At 57, it's now getting a bit rusty as to the dates, and are now only my best guess. I spent two nights (at least til 3am) using any phrase I could think of, to find an image of the second structure that spanned the Rancocas Creek. It appears that the only only image that even hints at it is found in part 1 of the Delanco story on pg. 8, That structure stood for 94 years.

Starting a new blog for the new layout. New apartment, new train room.

The Credit Valley Railway, in N Scale, circa 1900. From Orangeville south to Cheltenham.